It’s not often that a champion in League of Legends experiences a game-breaking bug or exploits a system in some manner, but one member of the cast appears to require immediate attention from Riot Games.
Bard is currently disabled in League “due to in-game issues.” A message in the client, viewable by clicking a red circle next to the “play” button, details that Riot is working on a fix.
As documented in a video by Vandiril, the problem seems to stem from an issue with Bard’s E interacting with either Anivia W or Trundle E. If a player uses Bard’s E and exits into a structure created by Anivia or Trundle, they’ll crash the game for all players. This interaction appears to be inconsistent and will not work every time but is nonetheless a major issue for the game.
When champions are disabled by Riot, they are unable to be played in any League game mode, including ARAM and ranked queues. It’s unclear when Bard will be reinstated into the game, though it is expected that Riot will resolve the issue accordingly.
Bard has remained a powerful yet unpopular pick in the support role for numerous patches. Thanks to their unique playstyle of roaming the map, multiple item build paths, and being able to place stasis in a wide area, Bard is often picked by players looking to have a map-wide impact but isn’t necessarily a champion that’s easily mastered. The Wandering Caretaker currently sits at a 49.97-percent win rate, according to OP.GG, though remains at the bottom of support champion popularity.
It’s unclear when this strange interaction between Bard and Anivia or Trundle will be fixed, allowing Bard to once again be picked in-game.
Update April 22 5:16pm CT: This post was updated to explain the reasoning behind Bard’s disabling after it was discovered.
This article includes affiliate links, which may provide small compensation to Dot Esports.
